Getting Started with Parse Server, Heroku and MongoLabs

Last week, Parse announced they would be shutting down their hosting by January 28th 2017, and like just about every other developer out there, I immediately started playing around with their open sourced Parse Server, and setting it up on Heroku.

For the record, I actually host most of my apps on Flybase (for data), Github Pages or S3 (for frontend) and Heroku for quick node.js apps. I also use Digital Ocean or AWS EC2 for other hosting, but I wanted to demonstrate how to quickly host Parse Server on Heroku first, I’ll show how to set Parse Server up on Digital Ocean and AWS EC2 later in other posts.

Parse Server is actually a pretty nicely written library, and I’ve even forked it to include Flybase support instead of Mongo, as well as having a version that supports multiple apps in one install, but today we’ll look at simply getting Parse Server running on Heroku.

Some Background

Until this week, if you were a Parse user, then you did not need to know how your client side code interacted with your Parse database, and even now, you just need a vague understanding of how it works.

But, there is a lot happening behind the scenes when you host your own Parse Server. So, now that you are going to be hosting it yourself, you should understand how some of it works.

First of all, most of the more difficult work is handled inside the Client side library, and then sent to the server side code as HTTP requests. None of this changes, the only change is where you talk to Parse rather than how you talk to Parse.

That means that all you have to keep in mind when explaining how your self-hosted Parse Server works will be these three sections:

Client code from which you make requests to the server

Server-side code that receives and processes these requests

A Database where the server-side code stores and retrieves data from.

Previously, Parse took care of all of this, but now, we have to setup our mongo database and web server. Luckily, Heroku and Mongolabs work together nicely and almost automatically in this process.

Let’s get started already!

First, You will need to create an account with Heroku, so go create one now if you haven’t already.

Then you’ll need to download the latest version of the Heroku tool-belt here. Once the download has finished you will be able to use heroku commands from the command line. (You’ll see why you want to do this in step 3)

1. Push the button

In your browser, go to: https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server-example, this is a sample node.js app that uses express.js and parse server to

You’ll see a purple button here that says Deploy to heroku.

Press it, press it right now.

2. Prepare the app with Heroku

Heroku’s one button deploys are handy for creating a new app, when you clicked the button in step 1, it took you to a page inside Heroku that asked you to name your app, give it a nice random name, or Heroku will name it for you.

MongoLab was also auto-selected as a necessary add-on, so that’s taken care of for you.

3. Modifying your parse server

From the terminal, you want to use the Heroku toolbelt I mentioned before step 1 to download your Heroku’d Parse server and make changes.

Login into heroku using the Heroku toolbelt:

herokulogin

Finally, you can clone your new heroku app:

herokugit:clone-aMYPARSEAPPNAME

This will download your parse server app to your local computer inside a folder called whatever you named your heroku app. Replace MYPARSEAPPNAME with the name of your app on Heroku.

If you’ve worked with Parse at all before, then you’re already familiar with having to add a clientKey and appId into the initialization of your client code, to allow your app to communicate with Parse.

Now however, you need to set these keys both in your client code and in the server code.

Open up index.js and set both the clientKey, and appId, to whatever you want

You will then need to go into the initialization block of your code, and set a matching appId.

On your client side, the only code change you’ll need to make is to specify your new server address. This is the address of your Heroku app that hosts your server side code. You can find it in the settings of your app on your Heroku Dashboard. It is just a URL of the form

When you migrate from Parse to a self-hosted Parse Server, you can also move over any cloud code you’ve set up so that you just call it when you want to work with it.

The default, included cloud code function is:

Parse.Cloud.define('hello',function(req,res){res.success('Hi');});

Which means when you make the HTTP request above, you get a return of Hi, where hello is the name of the function you created. You can have as many function as you want, and they all serve different purposes.

It is worth mentioning that several features that made Parse really useful, will not be available in your parse server right away.

The biggest feature that is missing is Push Notifications. But as it happens, it’s pretty easy to add Push Notification support to node.js, and I’ll cover in a later tutorial just how to add Push to your new Parse Server.

Background jobs was another feature missing, but you can look at queue systems or cron jobs to replace them easily. I also plan to write about migrated background jobs to a queued jobs setup.

I also recommend installing the free New Relic add-on inside your heroku app for handy analytics.

Is Heroku really free?

Yes and no, when you first start out, it’s free, but when you are ready to actually use your Parse Server apps then you’ll want to look at the $7 hobby plan at least, the reason for this is because free heroku apps are required to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity and must sleep for 6 hours in a 24 hour period. This is fine for development, but when ready to actually make use of it, you want to upgrade to the hobby plan for starters.

As I introduce you to posts about deploying Parse Server to other setups such as Digital Ocean and Amazon’s AWS instances, you’ll get a feel for which pricing plans you prefer.

Still Confused?

If you have questions about Parse Server, setting up push notifications, moving your data from Parse to MongoDB or Flybase, then just feel free to get in touch at anytime and I’ll be happy to answer any questions or lend a hand or two.

Roger Stringer spends most of his time solving problems for people, and otherwise occupying himself with being a dad, cooking, speaking, learning, writing, reading, and the overall pursuit of life. He lives in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada